Beyond Philosophy

Are things bad, for you or the world? Take comfort: nothing lasts forever, and human affairs are known to change dramatically overnight. Πολλάκις ἐνθυμοῦ τὸ τάχος τῆς παραφορᾶς καὶ ὑπεξαγωγῆς τῶν ὄντων τε καὶ γινομένων. ἥ τε γὰρ οὐσία οἷον ποταμὸς ἐν διηνεκεῖ ῥύσει καὶ αἱ ἐνέργειαι ἐν συνεχέσι μεταβολαῖς καὶ τὰ αἴτια ἐν μυρίαις τροπαῖς καὶ σχεδὸν οὐδὲν ἑστὼς καὶ τὸ πάρεγγυς· τὸ δὲ ἄπειρον τοῦ τε παρῳχηκότος καὶ μέλλοντος ἀχανές, ᾧ πάντα ἐναφανίζεται. πῶς οὖν οὐ μωρὸς ὁ ἐν τούτοις φυσώμενος ἢ σπώμενος ἢ σχετλιάζων ὡς ἔν τινι χρονίῳ καὶ ἐπὶ μακρὸν ἐνοχλήσαντι; Take time often to ponder how swiftly things that exist must pass away, how soon things that are currently building must vanish. For this realm of being goes by like a river in constant flood. Its works are evolving continuously, and its causes drive off in so many changing directions that hardly anything remains fixed, including whatever is close to us. Its infinite abyss holds what is gone and what is yet to come, gaping wide as ...

Unamuno continues to prepare the reader for the second part of his book, in which he will discuss how the strife between faith and reason is a fertile spring of hope, as well as despair. Here he makes the important observation that our moral action cannot depend on certainty, since that is not human: we are creatures who act from a position of uncertainty, always, no matter what we might say to the contrary. To deny this is ultimately to deny our humanity. Sí, ya sé que otros han sentido antes que yo lo que yo siento y expreso; que otros muchos lo sienten hoy, aunque se lo callan. ¿Por qué no lo callo también? Pues porque lo callan los más de los que lo sienten; pero, aun callándolo, obedecen en silencio a esa voz de las entrañas. Y no lo callo, porque es para muchos lo que no debe decirse, lo infando — infandum — , y creo que es menester decir una y otra vez lo que no debe decirse. ¿Que a nada conduce? Aunque sólo condujese a irritar a los progresistas, a los que creen que la verdad ...

Seneca continues his meditation on death, the great equalizer. Mors necessitatem habet aequam et invictam: quis queri potest in ea condicione se esse in qua nemo non est? prima autem pars est aequitatis aequalitas. Sed nunc supervacuum est naturae causam agere, quae non aliam voluit legem nostram esse quam suam: quidquid composuit resolvit, et quidquid resolvit componit iterum. Iam vero si cui contigit ut illum senectus leviter emitteret, non repente avulsum vitae sed minutatim subductum, o ne illum agere gratias diis omnibus decet quod satiatus ad requiem homini necessariam, lasso gratam perductus est. Vides quosdam optantes mortem, et quidem magis quam rogari solet vita. Nescio utros existimem maiorem nobis animum dare, qui deposcunt mortem an qui hilares eam quietique opperiuntur, quoniam illud ex rabie interdum ac repentina indignatione fit, haec ex iudicio certo tranquillitas est. Venit aliquis ad mortem iratus: mortem venientem nemo hilaris excepit nisi qui se ad illam diu compos...

Marcus Aurelius, as emperor of Rome, embodies and expresses the opposite of the same monarchic ideal that inspired Louis XIV's famous dictum: L 'état, c'est moi . The decision to identify oneself entirely with a community, a polis whose personal integrity includes and occludes our own, is one that most humans make instinctively, when we are born into traditional families, with elders whose cooperation and culture we require to survive. In the wake of the Reformation and Enlightenment, the discourse of modern civilization focuses on the integrity of the individual, where ancient discourse tends to speak in terms of communal integrity, with individuals becoming less significant (cf. the speech Livy gives to Gaius Mucius Scaevola in his history, 2.12.8-11 , or the apology Plato gives to Socrates, in which the philosopher explains his devotion to city over self). There is always dangerous tension here, in the place where communal and individual interests meet, as readers of th...

Unamuno does not believe that he offers anything new: the quest for novelty is for him a mistake, a failure to recognize how and what we inherit from the past, which lives on in us. To claim personal credit for my own human feeling or expression as though it were entirely unique, utterly unlike anyone else's, would be to destroy humanity, to his way of thinking. What makes us human is the fact that we feel and express so much that is similar: my lament, my sorrow, my tragedy is so far from being unique that I can find it echoing all over the world, in songs and tales as old as time. Se podrá también decir, y con justicia, que mucho de lo que voy a exponer es repetición de ideas, cien veces expuestas antes y otras cien refutadas; pero cuando una idea vuelve a repetirse, es que, en rigor, no fué de veras refutada. No pretendo la novedad de las más de estas fantasías, como no pretendo tampoco, ¡claro está!, el que no hayan resonado antes que la mía voces dando al viento las mismas que...

Death is an intimate and even essential part of life, Seneca says, and so we needn't fear it. Libentissime itaque illum audiebam quasi ferentem de morte: sententiam et qualis esset eius natura velut propius inspectae indicantem. Plus, ut puto, fidei haberet apud te, plus ponderis, si quis revixisset et in morte nihil mali esse narraret expertus: accessus mortis quam perturbationem afferat optime tibi hi dicent qui secundum illam steterunt, qui venientem et viderunt et receperunt. Inter hos Bassum licet numeres, qui nos decipi noluit. Is ait tam stultum esse qui mortem timeat quam qui senectutem; nam quemadmodum senectus adulescentiam sequitur, ita mors senectutem. Vivere noluit qui mori non vult; vita enim cum exceptione mortis data est; ad hanc itur. Quam ideo timere dementis est quia certa exspectantur, dubia metuuntur. Bassus offered rare insight, a vision of death as she appears most close and intimate, and so I used to hear his judgments of her nature most gladly, as though t...

Ancient philosophers sometimes imagined each of us as a little world, a small vessel whose life imitates in miniature the larger life that is nature. Honoring the power of nature, which relates and guides all life, includes honoring the power of our own nature, which relates us to ourselves and the little patch we inhabit within nature's broad realms. Τῶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τὸ κράτιστον τίμα· ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο τὸ πᾶσι χρώμενον καὶ πάντα διέπον. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐν σοὶ τὸ κράτιστον τίμα· ἔστι δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ἐκείνῳ ὁμογενές. καὶ γὰρ ἐπὶ σοῦ τὸ τοῖς ἄλλοις  χρώμενον τοῦτό ἐστι, καὶ ὁ σὸς βίος ὑπὸ τούτου διοικεῖται. Pay honor to the mightiest thing in the universe. This thing relates to every other thing, driving all of them. Pay honor likewise to the mightiest part of yourself. Your inner might is of the same kind as the might that drives the world, for it relates you to others, and your life is ruled by it.

Unamuno continues preparing readers for the second part of his book, in which he describes a counter-rational philosophy of life to match the rational philosophy of death. In this passage he recognizes something valuable about language: if it makes sense that we can follow, it will be rational (though it seem to say something absurd or irrational: our rejection of what is said will arise then from rational understanding of a real semantic gesture, a sign with meaning we can take). One of the tasks of language is to render things transmissible, abstractable from particular conditions so that others can find and use them. In this way, all successful language is rational: it conveys a coherent message across space and time. But what is that message? How many ways can it be read? Will all make the same sense? Many questions here, many opportunities to catch rational sight of irrational affects we adopt. Quiere esto decir que cuanto vamos a ver, los esfuerzos de lo irracional por expresarse...

Seneca discusses the way death affects us. In general, we flee her. Then, confronted with the inevitable in some quick moment, we rush to close and end things at once (like a cowardly gladiator, who would rather live, but rushes to die quickly when escape is impossible). Not every death will allow this, though. Some come slowly and wait, denying every escape. These demand courage. We must face death, knowing her, and not flinch. Such courage is the fruit of wisdom, Seneca says. Ergo inquit mors adeo extra omne malum est ut sit extra omnem malorum metum. Haec ego scio et saepe dicta et saepe dicenda, sed neque cum legerem aeque mihi profuerunt neque cum audirem iis dicentibus qui negabant timenda a quorum metu aberant: hic vero plurimum apud me auctoritatis habuit, cum loqueretur de morte vicina. Dicam enim quid sentiam: puto fortiorem esse eum qui in ipsa morte est quam qui circa mortem. Mors enim admota etiam imperitis animum dedit non vitandi inevitabilia; sic gladiator tota pugna ...